AI pi­lot ‘shoplifts’ at Mum­bai air­port

NEW DELHI: A se­nior Air In­dia pi­lot had to cough up around Rs2.4 lakh for al­legedly lift­ing a pair of sun­glasses from a du­tyfree shop at the Mum­bai air­port on Thurs­day.

The pi­lot, op­er­at­ing a Mum­bai-Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram flight, was try­ing on sun­glasses at a duty- f ree shop and al­legedly kept one in his pocket, sources said. Ac­cord­ing to sources, the sun­glasses were worth around Rs24,000.

T he s t ore of f i cials con­fronted him when he flew back to Mum­bai.

“He was asked to pay a penalty of Rs2.4 lakh, 10 times the cost of the item,” said an AI of­fi­cial, on con­di­tion of ano- nymity. A pi­lot col­league said there was some mis­un­der­stand­ing. “The pi­lot had bought two sun­glasses and ac­ci­den­tally took away a third one. He agreed to pay the penalty,” he said.

The in­ci­dent was a pri­vate mat­ter be­tween two par­ties that had been am­i­ca­bly set­tled, a spokesper­son for the na­tional car­rier said.